| |
| RIGHT rigorous, and so forth! Humbled | |
| By cares and mourning, tost and tumbled, | |
| Before your Ladyships, Tom Fool, | |
| Knowing above the rest you rule, | |
| Most lamentably sets his case | 5 |
| With a bold heart and saucy face. | |
| Sans shoes or stocking, coat or breeches, | |
| You see him now, most mighty witches, | |
| His body worn like an old farthing, | |
| The angry spirit just a-parting, | 10 |
| His credit rotten, and his purse | |
| As empty as a cobbler’s curse; | |
| His Poems, too, unsold—that’s worse! | |
| In short, between confounded crosses, | |
| Patrons all vexed and former losses, | 15 |
| Sure as a gun he cannot fail, | |
| Next week to warble in a jail, | |
| Which jail to folks not very sanguine | |
| Is just as good or worse than hanging; | |
| Though in the first vain hopes flatter, | 20 |
| But Hope’s quite strangled by the latter. | |
| Thus is a poor rhyming rascal treated, | |
| Fairly, or rather fouly cheated | |
| Of all the goods from wit accruing, | |
| (Wit that’s synonomous with ruin). | 25 |
| Then take it in your head-piece, Ladies, | |
| To set up a poor Bard, whose trade is | |
| Low fallen enough in conscience; pity | |
| The maker of this magic ditty; | |
| And turn your wheel once more in haste | 30 |
| To see him on the summit placed, | |
| For well you wot that woes (’od rot ’em) | |
| Have long since stretched him at the bottom, | |
| Where he who erst fine lyrics gabbled | |
| With mire and filth was sorely dabbled, | 35 |
| So pitifully pelted, that | |
| He looks like any drowned rat. | |
| O Justice, Justice, take his part! | |
| O lift him on thy lofty Cart | |
| Magnific Fame! And let Fat Plenty | 40 |
| Marry one Poet out of Twenty! | |
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